


gimli's super-fun super-exclusive start of march break party (snacks provided, pizza not)

by RayOfLight2513



Category: The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Fluff and Humor, Friendship, Gen, i wrote this for my 15-year-old sister's specifications for a modern au, so if you also like characters being buddies and stupid teenage shenanigans...
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-03
Updated: 2021-03-03
Packaged: 2021-03-16 16:42:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29827884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RayOfLight2513/pseuds/RayOfLight2513
Summary: On the Friday before the start of March break, Aragorn wakes up fourteen minutes before the bell rings. He rolls over, sees his alarm clock blinking cheerfully in warning, rolls back to stare at the ceiling, screams, and then rolls the other way so he can stumble out of bed.(This is 7 pages worth of stupid jokes tied together by the loosest plot thread possible.)
Kudos: 3





	gimli's super-fun super-exclusive start of march break party (snacks provided, pizza not)

On the Friday before the start of March break, Aragorn wakes up fourteen minutes before the bell rings. His guardian (though Gandalf prefers the term ‘roommate,’ if only because it heightens the comedic potential of their situation) hasn’t bothered to wake him up. Gandalf’s preferred disciplinary style is to let someone discover the consequences of their actions if those consequences are minor, and yell at them so loud they wish they'd just discovered the consequences of their actions if they aren't.

Aragorn rolls over, sees his alarm clock blinking cheerfully in warning, rolls back to stare at the ceiling, screams, and then rolls the other way so he can stumble out of bed. Three minutes later, he’s pulling his Vans on (letting the laces, which are permanently filthy with city dirt and slush, trail undone behind him), and running out the door.

Aragorn’s a good runner. He makes it the half-kilometer to his school with three minutes to spare, which he spends trying to wash the sweat from his face and underarms in the boys’ bathroom. It doesn’t work - his hair is greasy and stringy, his face red, his hoodie toothpaste-stained, and he smells.

“Arwen isn’t with you because you’re good-looking,” he tells his reflection, and hurries off to start his day.

“Calc is evil,” Aragorn says, and rests his forehead on his textbook like the information might soak in that way. “Evil, evil, evil.”

“Calc isn’t evil,” Eowyn says with absolutely no sympathy, prodding at his head with a pen. He can feel from the pain that she hasn’t bothered to cap it, and hopes that there isn’t ink all over his face in the second before he remembers he hasn’t washed his hair in nearly a week, so ink isn’t the major thing wrong with his head. “You’re just stupid.”

“You’re so mean to me,” Aragorn whines, tilting so he can lie on the side of his face and look at her. Eowyn has, by her own words, ‘two skills in life: kicking ass at soccer and taking names in calc.’ She’s in grade eleven and breezes through this class. It makes him want to cry.

Boromir, from behind him, throws an eraser at him. It bounces off his skull and lands on his desk, because Boromir is the biggest jock ever to jock and can just do these things. Aragorn wrenches himself up from his desk so he slams his back against his chair and lets his head fall back until he’s looking at Boromir upside down.

“Did that hurt,” Boromir says, his face perfectly deadpan.

Aragorn refuses to give that a response.

“Don’t tell me to focus today,” Aragorn begs. “Any other day I love and appreciate you for making my ADHD ass do things I don’t want it to do. But today is the Friday before March Break and I don’t have it in me.”

“You’re forgetting,” Boromir says, and motions down to his shirt. Boromir is wearing a collared button-up shirt, slacks, and a belt. This is what Boromir wears every day, so it takes Aragorn a little while to notice - the top button on Boromir’s shirt is undone. 

Aragorn gasps. He gets up from his chair and flips himself around, cool-policeman style. (Not that policemen are cool, ACAB, etc.) “Are you… is this…”

“Vacation Boromir,” Eowyn says, voice hushed in fake awe. “That rare and majestic creature seen only 27 days a year. March break, winter break, and the Fridays directly before.”

“I am shocked and humbled to be in your presence,” Aragorn says. It’s only, like, 32% a joke. 

“That wasn’t an eraser-throw of focus, but one of whimsy,” Boromir explains. “We are having a party and a whole teenage experience tonight, we are finally old enough to call it senioritis instead of being unmotivated, and we are none of us single. This is the best our lives have been since second grade.”

They all take a second to reflect on the glory that is and was second grade. Eowyn says, “Actually, running around half-feral in third grade was the year for me,” but they wave her silent. 

Once the appropriate appreciation has been expressed, Aragorn taps his foot and mutters, ‘party.’ And keeps saying it, in a whispered chant, until Eowyn and Boromir have joined in, their whispers growing louder and louder until everyone is staring and the three of them are banging on their desks screaming, “PARTY!”

“ENOUGH!” Mr. Lindir, their calc teacher, shouts. “Really, boys, I expect better from you! Eowyn -” 

“Sir, this is exactly equal to what you expected from me and we both know it,” Eowyn admits.

“I put you beside your friends so that they’d be a good influence on you,” he warns. “Don’t make me move you to the front.”

They succeed in stifling their giggles until they’ve all leaked out. Eowyn digs around in her backpack and emerges with a bright blue snapback. It reads, _Bros Before Brownies_ , and is complete with an image of a muscled arm and a donut. “It’s Eomer’s,” she says unnecessarily. 

“Is it supposed to be saying you have to be tough to be Eomer’s friend? Or is it talking about working out?” Aragorn says.

“No idea,” Eowyn says, before turning in her seat and putting it with great ceremony on Boromir’s desk. “However, Vacation Boromir needs something greater identifying him than just the button.”

Boromir settles the snapback carefully onto his fluffy black hair. “Sister-in-law one way and cousin-in-law another,” he says, pausing so Eowyn can make her face and sound of disgust and distress (as if it isn’t her own fault for dating her cousin’s boyfriend’s brother), “You are the only motherfucker in this city who can handle me.”

Aragorn feels vaguely guilty for still taking gym class in Grade 12. He’s supposed to be serious, loading up on useful courses, and instead of doing Physics he’s running laps around the track shivering in his flimy gym shorts. He thinks resentfully about how his best friends aren’t shivering: Gimli lets off heat like a furnace, and Legolas has a sort of unflappable calm that isn’t affected by little things like temperature. He’s known Legolas since Aragorn was a snot-nosed little ten-year-old (Legolas was little, but never snot-nosed), and he’s never seen Legolas sweat. 

He’s known Gimli for almost as long, and loves the hell out of both of them, but they are. So. Incredibly. Annoying. It’s one thing when he’s being annoying along with them, the three of them passing a bit along as it rapidly devolves in clarity, but these days their personal bickering has gone from antagonistic to something far more... sinister. No one but Pippin believes him (and having only Pippin makes it worse somehow), but Aragorn is convinced they’re flirting. 

“I’m going to rip your spine out,” Gimli huffs as he tries to keep up his pace. “I swear on all that is holy, if you keep skipping along acting like this isn’t torture I will rip your spine out, Legolas.”

“What are you going to do with my spine?” Legolas asks.

“Hang it from my bedroom ceiling like a whale at a Natural History Museum,” Gimli says so quickly it’s clear he was expecting Legolas to ask.

“Are we even sure Leoglas has a spine,” Aragorn says, as they weave around Eomer and his crowd of hockey jocks. 

“Are you calling me a coward?”

“No, I just genuinely don’t think there are any bones in your body. I know you can do the splits.”

“We should push him off the roof,” Gimli says. “See if he bounces.”

“You’re just jealous I’m the hot one,” Legolas says, which makes Aragorn laugh so hard he has to stop running and rest his hands on his knees. Legolas is, in his family, the kid everyone used to hope would ‘grow into his looks.’ Gimli, meanwhile, has every person in his apartment building that he isn’t biologically related to nursing a crush on him.

“Okay, okay, fine,” Legolas says, his voice just on the edge of mildly annoyed (which, for Legolas, is akin to homicidal rage). “Gimli’s the hot one, but I’m better-looking than you.”

“You think I’m the hot one?” Gimli says. Legolas turns to stare at him. 

“Oh, no,” Aragorn whispers, as they continue gazing dramatically into each other’s eyes. “No, no, no, no, nope!”

And with that, he clamps his hand around Gimli’s bicep and starts to sprint, separating the two of them and leaving Legolas to catch up.

It’s not that he doesn’t approve of their relationship, although he isn’t looking forward to how inevitably couple-y they’re going to be at the beginning. However, he’s got four hair-ties, a safety pin, and half a Kit Kat bar on them getting together in May, and he refuses to let Pippin win that bet. 

Unfortunately, student government duties don’t stop, even on the last day of school. Aragorn is president of the student body, which means he can’t skip. It’s a pity, too - Legolas and Gimli are going to McDonalds, and will undoubtedly refuse to pick up fries for him. 

Still, student government isn’t all bad, especially now that he’s a grade 12 and in charge, as opposed to a pathetic junior rep. It doesn’t hurt that he’s got some great friends here, such as Faramir, who is waiting outside the door to the history classroom where they have their meetings. 

“Are you afraid to go in?” Aragorn says. 

Faramir nods fervently. “You’re the president, it’s your job to be the brave one. I’m just V.P.”

“You’ll probably be president next year when I’m gone,” Aragorn says. “And shouldn’t I be training you to be braver?”

“You’re just scared to go in, aren’t you.”

Faramir is too smart for his own good sometimes. Boromir was miserable in student government and is much happier now that he can play basketball and peer-tutor to his heart’s content, but sometimes Aragorn misses having a second-in-command who was exactly as smart as he was. 

“Faramir, that’s my girlfriend’s grandmother in there,” Aragorn whines. “I have never once in my life had a solo conversation with her, and I’m not planning to start now.”

Eomer, president of the Athletic Council, joins them while they wait awkwardly for Aragorn’s girlfriend to save them. “Party at Gimli’s house tonight,” he sings to the tune of ‘Party Rockers.’ “We’re gonna… do March Break fun stuff.”

“Song got away from you?” Faramir asks.

“Shut up, nerd, you try doing better,” Eomer says. He and Faramir get along quite well, but Eomer occasionally remembers his duty is to be mean to his little sister’s boyfriend. 

“You know you literally need me on your side if you ever want me to introduce you to Lothloriel,” Faramir says. “Also, try, ‘it’s March Break we’re gonna have a fun time.’”

Aragorn continues with, “We’ll make Gimli’s dad lose his mind,” and they’re all doing the running man for the dance break outside the history room when Arwen joins them.

“Should I also be doing this?” she says, handing her books for Aragorn to carry and kissing him on the cheek. 

“No, we were just waiting for you to go into the room first,” Faramir admits, while Eomer laughs at Aragorn for how easily he accepted Arwen’s heavy Government and French textbooks. Arwen is a feminist (and not just on social media - she’s actually been to protests), but she takes full advantage of parts of the patriarchy that make her life easier, like asking her boyfriend to carry her things for her. That hypocrisy is one of Aragorn’s favourite things about her - it proves she’s an actual flawed human being. If you’d ever seen Arwen, you’d know why that was sometimes in question.

“There’s a joke to be made here about the arts saving the school once again, proving we’re just as valuable as sports or academics. One might even say… more valuable,” Arwen says as she opens the door and says, “Hi, Ms. Galadriel!” (Galadriel may be Arwen’s grandmother, but Arwen very carefully keeps her personal and professional lives separate.)

“Well, hold on,” Eomer and Faramir both say, as the three of them stumble into the room to argue with her. 

After an uneventful period in Government passing notes with Arwen, he has a spare for his final, peer tutoring the ninth graders in Gandalf’s unoccupied classroom. Aragorn’s been assigned four of them to work with: Frodo (who mainly just asks Aragorn to bring books in for him to read and discuss, and as his original mentee his secret favourite), Sam (who is getting straight As through sheer force of stubbornness), Merry (who will either end up the next tech billionaire or will be broken by the system and become an unemployed stoner), and Pippin (Gandalf’s archnemesis). 

Aragorn has never understood just why his guardian/roommate and a fourteen-year-old boy gleefully spend their days making each other’s lives miserable. Right now, Gandalf has stepped out of the room to go yell cheerfully at the other history teacher, Radagast. Pippin is ransacking his drawers for weed.

“I’m pretty sure he doesn’t --” Aragorn starts.

“What, have weed? You really look at a man like Gandalf and expect him not to be constantly 420 blazing it?” Pippin says. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

“I don’t think he’d bring it to school if he did, though,” Sam says. Aragorn shoots him a grateful look. Sam stares back at him levelly - he’s doing quadratic equations right now, which Aragorn had forcibly removed from his memory and couldn’t provide any assistance for. Sam is a little mad at him for it.

“I know he did, and I know it’s in here somewhere!” Pip says. “Merry, come help me look!”

Merry ignores him until Pippin runs over to pull at his hair. Then Merry detaches himself from his phone to follow. Ignoring Gandalf’s school-issued teacher’s desk, he turns to the cupboard of now-defunct history textbooks. “If I was hiding weed,” he mutters, dragging a stack of chairs four high over and clambering on top. “I’d put it on the top… here!”

Merry sticks his arm into the piles of textbooks up to the shoulder and emerges carrying a little plastic bag full of something green. “What,” Aragorn says, so shocked he forgets to make it a proper question.

“Weed,” Pippin says, his eyes full of stars as Merry drops the bag over the side and begins the dangerous balancing act of coming down from the pile of chairs. Aragorn walks over to him, picks him up from under his armpits, and deposits him on the floor. He takes a closer look at the bag. He’s never seen weed in real life, but. This does look a lot like weed.

Sam emerges from his quadratics and Frodo from his Shakespeare in order to take a proper look, Frodo tucking the book into his armpit as they wander over. Sam sees the bag and huffs out a laugh. “That’s oregano,” he says. “Gandalf put oregano in a bag and hid it on the top shelf just to make Pip’s life harder.”

“Are you sure?” Frodo says. Sam swipes the bag from Merry’s hand, cracks the Ziploc seal, and sniffs it, as Aragorn says, “No!”

“Yeah,” Sam says. “Oregano.”

“Why’d you tell him ‘no’?” Frodo asks. 

“What?”

“You said no,” Merry says. “Were you worried he’d get high? From sniffing a bag of dried oregano?”

“I thought it was weed,” Aragorn mutters, before all the niners start to roar in laughter. 

“He thought you’d get high!” Pippin keeps repeating, until Gandalf himself comes into the room and roars, “What is going on in here?”

“We found your --” Merry starts, but Gandalf zeroes in on the bag of oregano in Pippin’s hand and says, “Peregrin Took, is that _marijuana?_ On school grounds?”

“It’s yours!” Pippin shouts, but Gandalf thunders, “I’ve never in my life smoked marijuana, and I’m disappointed in you for accusing me of your own misconduct. You could be suspended for this!”

“It’s not mine!” Pippin bawls, as Gandalf continues to shout and Sam backs far away from the situation and Frodo removes his copy of _King Lear_ from under his arm and continues to read. Merry tries his best to get control of the situation for several seconds before walking over to Aragorn and tugging on his hoodie.

“Yeah, okay,” Aragorn says, and then hops in one motion onto Gandalf’s desk to shout, “Enough!”

“Pippin, Gandalf is paying you back for the incident with the watermelon, and you deserve all of this. Gandalf, he’s learned his lesson.” They both nod, slightly shame-faced, looking like children much younger than Pippin and much, much younger than Gandalf. Aragorn feels for a second bizarrely like a kindergarten teacher. He nods once, decisively, then hops off the desk and walks over to Sam to give quadratics another attempt.

They take 2 buses and the subway over to Gimli’s apartment, a group of fourteen. Aragorn marvels at it, sometimes, how much their friend group has grown since the start of the school year, small groups and loners combining across grades and social structure. Four grade nines new to the high school, the 4 grade twelves Gandalf assigned to mentor them. Over the school year, Arwen and Boromir’s own friend group of Theodred, Eomer, Eowyn, and Faramir joined. Now, their lunch table stretches across two tables, with Gimli’s cousins, various people Eomer and Boromir know, and Legolas’ best friend Tauriel coming in and out. Theodred is on shift at his father’s shop on Fridays, and so won’t be coming to the party. Replacing him is Gimli’s cousin Kili and Legolas’ best friend Tauriel, who a couple years ago shouted down their families and are now very loudly dating. Aragorn hopes they don’t give his best friends any ideas until May.

Gimli’s apartment building isn’t fancy, but it’s got a caring community living inside it: everything is immaculately clean and there’s artwork on most of the walls. They troop through the lobby, Gimli calling out a hello to someone named Dwalin sitting at the front desk. Gimli and most of his extended family lives on the seventh floor, so they have to take the elevator. Being stupid, at first they all try to squeeze in together, and struggle for a few minutes (during which the doors keep closing on poor Sam) before giving up and going in two groups.

“Listen,” Aragorn quickly counsels Legolas when Gimli and Kili have gone up in the first elevator. “I know you grew up on the edge of town with the ravine in your backyard, but don’t be a jerk about how small his apartment is, okay? It’s rude.”

“I wouldn’t do that,” Legolas says.

“September Legolas would have,” Aragorn points out, which Legolas makes a face at.

“September Legolas is unaffiliated with March Legolas,” he says, and makes a point of complimenting Gimli on a painting of a waterfall in his hallway. 

“My mother did that,” Gimli says, and beams as he lets them all into his apartment. 

There isn’t enough space to dance, and picking a movie would have turned into a brawl, so they’re having a board game night instead. Arwen brought Risk and Monopoly from her family’s board game closet and Cards Against Humanity from her brothers’ dorm room, and they set up in 3 loose circles. Every few minutes, someone will call across the room and ask to switch places with someone into another game. Every several minutes, one of the circles will erupt in yelling and accusations of cheating and mad laughter.

It’s nearly 8 before the board games die down enough for them to realize they forgot to eat dinner, and they’re all too hungry to wait the hour it’ll take to deliver enough pizza to feed all of them to Gimli’s house. But then, like a hero, Gimli’s 19-year-old cousin Fili comes in, searching for the Cool Ranch Doritos because Gloin has the best snack cupboard in the whole family. In between Gimli and Kili yelling at him about how Cool Ranch is objectively the worst kind of Doritos, Aragorn has Pippin steal the bag and hide it in Faramir’s backpack. 

“We’ll get you your Doritos… if you go pick us up pizza,” Aragorn offers. “We’ll pay, it’s just that no one has a car.”

Fili looks at them all - varying degrees of uncomfortable with blackmail (Frodo), trying to look intimidating so the blackmail works better (Eowyn), and too hungry to care about the morality of their actions (Aragorn). “I’m a busy engineering student with homework,” he whines. “I don’t have time to get pizza for a bunch of fourteen-year-olds.”

“We’ll let you have some and play board games with us,” Aragorn offers. 

“You don’t think I have anything better to do than play board games with a bunch of my cousin’s friends?”

Aragorn tries to figure out a way to put this tactfully, but Eowyn comes to his rescue with her absolute indifference to hurting Fili’s feelings. “If you had something better to do, you wouldn’t be in here looking for Cool Ranch Doritos.”

Fili shrugs, then nods, acknowledging the point. 

“Keeps me out of our apartment, anyways,” he says. “Uncle Thorin’s got Bilbo over, and they’re arguing very loudly about whether to watch a nature documentary or the Great British Baking Show.”

“Your uncle watches nature documentaries?” Tauriel says, distracted by the idea of Thorin Oakenshield doing anything for enjoyment.

“My uncle watches nature documentaries,” Frodo says, sounding the usual combination of distressed and embarrassed he wears whenever the fact that his uncle and Gimli’s uncle are dating is brought up. “He says it’s relaxing to see all the animals eat each other because it makes his own problems seem smaller, and he says cooking shows are like watching a documentary about his own job.”

“But that means…” Tauriel says, slow smiles spreading over her and Kili’s face.

Frodo nods. “ _Thorin_ watches the Great British Baking Show.”

People start to disperse at 10, when Arwen’s father comes to get her, during which Aragorn tries to stand up straight and hide the pizza sauce stain on his hoodie. Theodred comes by with his dad and their pickup truck to pick up his cousins, plus Boromir and Faramir - the whole group watches giggling from the windows as five long-limbed teenagers try to fit into a space designed for three. At midnight, the ninth graders have all fallen asleep on the carpet, and Frodo’s uncle is ousted from Kili and Fili’s apartment to take them back home.

Eventually, it’s just Gimli, Legolas and Aragorn left, playing a violent game of Mario Kart. At two, Gimli’s uncle comes out of his bedroom to tell them, “Either get out or go to sleep! I can’t rest with all the commotion you’re making, and I’m deaf!” 

Aragorn and Legolas look at each other and shrug. Gandalf goes to bed at eight thirty and Aragorn doesn’t want to take transit in the middle of the night, so he’s going to stay. Legolas could probably ask his father to come get him, but he’s probably relishing the night away. Legolas’ father is a good man, but an annoying one.   
So Gimli lends Legolas his grade 9 gym uniform and Aragorn his grade 10 (which for both of them are simultaneously too short and too baggy) and they brush their teeth with their fingers before stretching out on blanket nests on the floor of Gimli’s room.

Gimli, being a legend, is asleep only a few minutes after his head hits the pillow, as loud and steady as an engine. Aragorn can feel Legolas awake beside him, though. When he glances over, he can see the shine in his friend’s eyes as they pick up the moon. Just when he’s about to ask what’s wrong, Legolas whispers, “Aragorn. Are you asleep?”

“Yeah,” Aragorn says, just to be obnoxious. “What’s up?”

“I was just thinking about how much our lives have changed over this school year.”

“What about it?”

“I mean, at the start, I'd been going to this school for 3 years and still only knew you and Tauriel. And now I have a whole friend group, and I play on a sports team.”

“And this is good?”

“This is really good,” he whispers.

“Yeah,” Aragorn whispers, a stupid smile on his face. “Yeah, it is.”

**Author's Note:**

> Boromir's hair is black and fluffy because the only Boromir I recognize is the one drawn by tumblr user lesbiansforboromir.


End file.
